Feral Druid Discussion - Page 2

Graham · 02/28/06, 10:49 PM

Originally Posted by newladin,February 28th, 2006 @ 10:47PM

I think he is just talking about the hexxer fight.

Ah right, no bears can't be Jin'do MC'd AFAIK.

Lord BEEF · 02/28/06, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by Runnybabbit,February 28th, 2006 @ 7:15PM

What I'm more interested in is how Feral druids contribute to a raid in ways that warriors and rogues can't. Do they? And, more importantly, can they do so consistently? Anecdotal "I saved the raid once" stories aren't opinion changers. I want to hear about the unique things you bring to the table each and every time you raid.

Well firstly, it'll take a good chunk of AQ loot to truly determine the effectiveness of a feral druid. You can't compare a druid using various blue gear to a rogue in bloodfang and expect the druid to compare.

Essentially, in a cat form DPS role, a druid provides X% of rogue dps, also has the ability to heal themselves and others in a limited fashion. In addition, they have the ability to res another player of their choosing. They can also remove curses and poisons. Finally if specced for it they provide a 3% crit aura to their group.

Compared this to a rogue, who does 100% of a rogue's damage, and also can stun things in some fights. That's ultimately all a rogue offers.

The question ultimately comes down to this:

Is the % of DPS a cat form druid provides high enough so that a feral druid's utility makes their net worth beyond the dps that you'd get by subbing in another rogue?

If their % of DPS is only 60 of a rogue you could bring, and you get to a boss where you have to burn them down as quickly as possible otherwise the raid gets wiped, then no, of course you're better off with a rogue.

But if their % is closer to 85%, and early in the fight you battle res a DPS class, letting them do their very high dps for the rest of a fight, then of course you're better off with a druid.

If a druid can get to 100% of a rogue's damage (not gonna happen), then there's no reason to bring a rogue at all except for the fact that they have the 20% passive threat reduction and vanish.

Krag · 02/28/06, 10:52 PM

Originally Posted by diospadre,February 28th, 2006 @ 10:39PM

Can bears be hexed?

Nope, bears can't be hexed :)

I doubt I'll ever spec feral personally, but I have no problems with others doing it. For most of the raids you'd, as others have pointed out, most likely have to be a healer for the simple fact that on most challenging fights tasks at hand are best done by the classes specialized for it. Which means warriors and rogues do the jobs a feral druid could do in feral forms. Druids on the other hand are very, very good healers and rival priests (at least until 1.10) on that front.

(speeling edit)

newladin · 02/28/06, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,February 28th, 2006 @ 10:50PM

Originally Posted by Runnybabbit,February 28th, 2006 @ 7:15PM

What I'm more interested in is how Feral druids contribute to a raid in ways that warriors and rogues can't. Do they? And, more importantly, can they do so consistently? Anecdotal "I saved the raid once" stories aren't opinion changers. I want to hear about the unique things you bring to the table each and every time you raid.

You can't compare a druid using various blue gear to a rogue in bloodfang and expect the druid to compare.

Hmm, this sounds familiar.

Lord BEEF · 02/28/06, 11:08 PM

For bear tanking on the other hand, there's a really interesting thread comparing a warrior and druid using all "ideal" tanking gear that I found very interesting:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post744351

The basic summary is that druids are very comparable in tanking if both classes have their ideal sets of gear.

XI- · 02/28/06, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,February 28th, 2006 @ 11:08PM

For bear tanking on the other hand, there's a really interesting thread comparing a warrior and druid using all "ideal" tanking gear that I found very interesting:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post744351

The basic summary is that druids are very comparable in tanking if both classes have their ideal sets of gear.

Well, comparable I suppose is a matter of opinion. I'd rather have 0% chance of my tank getting crit than the 4.5k armor, and 1k hp.

Chupa · 03/01/06, 12:43 AM

Dios, you look at it exactly opposite the way I do.

I like feral because I can contribute 300 dps or capable tanking to a raid with a very minimal impact on my healing ability. The utility is what I love so much. Healers/casters getting stomped? Bear-charge-taunt! Healing under control on trash? Cat form! Boss fight? Healbot! I also really enjoy LotP, and I know many DPS classes that enjoyed being in my group because of it. It's nice to bring more utility to a raid than just innervate.

I love, though, that feral druids are the ones who get made fun of for this, when shamans are practically equivalent. You have the Fjords who will tank anything they can, and the Relwin/Shabadus who love to do the dps, but, hey, they don't change forms in the prcess so who cares what they do, right? Why are druids expected to be nothing but healbots when the other hybrid class isn't held to the same standard? Why do we even have druids and shamans then, we should all be priests!

I love how we say lol beartank and then never actually try it, when most warriors prefer to do dps anyway and there is a large body of evidence that well-geared druids make good tanks. I love how I'm made to feel guilty every time I use cat form, even if we have plenty of healers. I love that I can do all this and still be an extremely capable healer, and yet still get made fun of regularly for doing so.

diospadre · 03/01/06, 1:07 AM

Originally Posted by Chupa,February 28th, 2006 @ 11:43PM

You have the Fjords who will tank anything they can

Don't get me started on this.

As a warrior who enjoys tanking more than DPS it irritates me when a druid or shaman is actively fighting with me for aggro on a mob as it wastes both him and me. Bear form strikes me as something that is completely useless outside of the encounters that I listed, and saying "but we CAN tank 20mans" doesn't convince me when the real stretch of classes' merits is never in 20mans. The same goes for trash. If feral druids can shave 15 or 20 minutes off a raid's clear time that's cool, but how much time would they save a raid if they had no points in feral but went cat anyway? 10?

I think it's telling that when boss time comes around all the druids are healing away regardless of their talent specs because hey, if the raid wipes because there wasn't enough healing due to cats and bears running around there goes all that time that their extra dps had saved everyone.

I do think that just about every druid should have 11 points in prot, because seriously fuck not having intercept, but it would take a lot more than a crit aura and the ability to tank swarmguards to convince me that anything beyond those 11 wouldn't be better for the raid if they were put somewhere else.

And you shouldn't worry about being made fun of, hell we shit on our Prot warriors. however I do think that your healing abilities are what they are thanks to your above average skill as a healer and not your spec. I also don't mean to discount raids being more fun to you when you can go feral, which they obviously are.

(I wish I could bang out complaints as fast as I could these posts.)

Lord BEEF · 03/01/06, 1:32 AM

Originally Posted by diospadre,March 1st, 2006 @ 12:07AM

I think it's telling that when boss time comes around all the druids are healing away regardless of their talent specs because hey, if the raid wipes because there wasn't enough healing due to cats and bears running around there goes all that time that their extra dps had saved everyone.

Against bosses, everyone switches to what they can do best for that fight. It just happens that when you go through two raid dungeons that gear you up for a particular role you tend to be better at that, so it's no surprise that druids switch to healing mode against bosses.

However druids really shouldn't go into healing mode against all bosses. For example, as a full resto spec I really miss having feral talents against jindo, ebonroc and moam as the dps I deal there removes the need for much healing to be done.

Lord BEEF · 03/01/06, 1:56 AM

Originally Posted by XI-,February 28th, 2006 @ 10:24PM

Well, comparable I suppose is a matter of opinion. I'd rather have 0% chance of my tank getting crit than the 4.5k armor, and 1k hp.

Well the whole idea is that you can live through crits much more than a warrior could.

Let's pretend there's a boss that does 10,000 damage before any armor. 15,000 on a crushing blow, and 20,000 on a crit.

A crit against the druid with the gear mentioned in that thread would be for 5572 damage, for 51% of his health. This would happen roughly 4% of the swings from the boss.

A crushing blow against a warrior with that gear would be for 4876, or 50% of his health. This would happen from roughly 15% of the attacks from the boss.

Warriors have higher overall mitigation for sure due to parry and block, but to assume "the bear will get crit and die" is just ignorance.

Torael_7 · 03/01/06, 2:11 AM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF,March 1st, 2006 @ 1:56AM

Originally Posted by XI-,February 28th, 2006 @ 10:24PM

Well, comparable I suppose is a matter of opinion.�* I'd rather have 0% chance of my tank getting crit than the 4.5k armor, and 1k hp.

Well the whole idea is that you can live through crits much more than a warrior could.

Let's pretend there's a boss that does 10,000 damage before any armor. 15,000 on a crushing blow, and 20,000 on a crit.

A crit against the druid with the gear mentioned in that thread would be for 5572 damage, for 51% of his health. This would happen roughly 4% of the swings from the boss.

A crushing blow against a warrior with that gear would be for 4876, or 50% of his health. This would happen from roughly 15% of the attacks from the boss.

Warriors have higher overall mitigation for sure due to parry and block, but to assume "the bear will get crit and die" is just ignorance.

:huh:

Did you mix up the warrior and druid for some of that? Because it looks like the druid with 329 defense is getting crit 11% less often than the protection warrior with 442 defense...or am I just misunderstanding this fancy "tanking" buisiness?

diospadre · 03/01/06, 2:29 AM

Crushing blows have a flat 15% rate. Crits have a rate that varies with a mob's stats and the tank's defense.

Lord BEEF · 03/01/06, 2:31 AM

Note where I stated crushing blows and where I stated crits. Those maths are off the assumption that the warrior is getting crit 0% of the time, which is good for him since they would take off 67% of his health.

It would actually play out that the warrior gets crushing blows 15% of the time (not a damn thing anyone can do about that), and a druid would get crit 4% of the timeand crushed 15% of the time. A crushing blow in this case would take off 38.5% of the druid's health.

Torael_7 · 03/01/06, 2:54 AM

Ahhhh. Okay. So, yeah, I just dont understand this fancy tanking stuff then. Thanks for the clarification.

Sebudai · 03/01/06, 5:00 AM

We have 6 druids and 3(maybe 4) are heavy feral specs. We use them a lot.

We rely on bear form druids quite a bit with our current Prophet Skeram, Fankriss, and Nefarian strats. We found having extra tanks for Skeram really helped us. We'll use up to nine total 'tanks' on that encounter if we have enough warriors/druids. On Fankriss we don't use the fear bomb zerg strat(anymore), so our feral druids tank bugs throughout the whole fight, and they are arguably better at doing than a warrior would be. On Nefarian we use bear form druids in stage one to help control mobs on the side that AE's(we AE one side and focus fire the other).

We've also used them on the royals, the drakes in BWL, Sartura, and various trash pulls when we don't have our usual warrior turnout.

I prefer to have a nice mix of restoration and feral spec druids. I think our guild is better off that way. I think it is a valuable tool for raids, and entirely different than bringing elemental spec shaman, or shadow spec priests.